Robert Davey

I wrote a letter to the New York Times last week, suggesting that members of Congress who say they are opposed to government regulation should be asked a test question: offered the choice of two elevators, one inspected and maintained according to applicable regulations, the other not, which...

The National Transportation Safety Board sent a letter Nov. 9 to Pinnacle Airlines, parent company of Colgan Air, regarding the recent discovery of emails exchanged in 2008 by Colgan officials expressing doubts about one of its pilots' fitness to begin training on the complex Dash 8 Q400 turboprop. The pilot,...

Obama's jobs speech this evening has a foregone outcome. It is doomed to fail, because the only thing that can create new jobs is new government spending, and that has been made impossible by the deals that he has been compelled to make with Republicans. The law enacted as a...

The crash of TWA Flight 800 happened fifteen years ago today, on July 17, 1996, at 8:31 p.m. eastern daylight time. The 25-year-old Boeing 747-100 had just begun an overnight flight from New York to Paris, and was at an altitude of about 13,000 feet when it suddenly exploded and...

It was refreshing to hear Michael Joseph Gross discussing his article about Sarah Palin, in the October Vanity Fair, on the Leonard Lopate show on WNYC public radio last Friday (Sept.17). "Anyone with a basic sense of manners and decency," he said, would not have treated hotel staff, the bellhops...

The New York Times reported Monday, May 10, that the big banks have employed an army of lobbyists to persuade legislators to get rid of a provision in the Senate's financial reform bill that would effectively bar the banks from trading in derivatives.

Those lobbyists would doubtless say that...

Recent events have put a spotlight on the manufacturer of a component in a mechanism that played a critical role in the Continental Connection Flight 3407 crash outside Buffalo on Feb. 12 last year. Just last week the Federal Aviation Administration issued an order that requires airlines operating a Canadian-made...

I mostly enjoyed this Golden Globe-winning, Oscar-nominated film. SPOILER ALERT!!! If you intend to see it and don't want to be told about a significant plot development, please don't read any further.

So -- those still with me are warned that I'm about to reveal a plot twist.

The...

No surprise really, but very disappointing all the same, that owing to the activities of a few extremist nutcases, Obama is signaling he's prepared to accept health care reform that does not include a public option.

Obama does not seem to have a taste for conflict; he seems too keen...

Michael Jackson's tragic death put me in mind of a question that first struck me some years ago: How did Jackson keep that boyish treble voice as he matured? The boy who sang on the Jackson Five's early hits became the grown-up Michael Jackson without apparently going through the vocal...

Why does today's New York Times characterize John McCain's actions and motives regarding the first presidential debate in ways that the McCain campaign itself would applaud? The writers and editors seem to agree that McCain's actions are admirable; otherwise why describe them as "daring, unpredictable"? No doubt the Times...

Now President Bush has the law he and Director of National Intelligence Mike McConnell set out, more than a year ago, to manipulate Congress and the media into giving them, perhaps it's time to consider once again the role played by Spc. Alex Jimenez. Jimenez was abducted by Iraqi insurgents...

To me it is the people criticizing Hillary for her remarks recalling the assassination of Robert F. Kennedy who have lost their minds, not the candidate herself.

It's quite clear that Senator Clinton was merely trying to make a point that, compared to the 1992 campaign of Bill Clinton,...

Something neither the airlines nor Boeing nor Airbus will have been keenly anticipating is a new rule, due this month, that is perhaps the final flicker of regulatory response to the TWA Flight 800 crash, which happened 12 years ago this July. The Federal Aviation Administration's recent new toughness, subjecting...

The Bush administration has repeatedly claimed that the lapse of the Protect America Act, which expired Feb 16 and has yet to be replaced, has significantly impeded the war on terrorism. I think this is probably complete nonsense, and not just because alternative legal tools are available: The Foreign Intelligence...

Is there a moral center to President Bush? He won't allow stem cell research and he's against abortion, but so much of what he says is clearly calculated to prey on our fear of terrorism, and so much is simply untrue. But neither Democrats nor the media are prepared to...

I have been following stories about the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act since 2002 when it first emerged as a factor in the investigations into the Sept. 11 attacks.

Back then the Bush administration claimed that FISA was outmoded and ineffective in combating 21st-century terrorist threats. It has fought political battles,...